Unlike AMD, which releases multiplier-unlocked versions of their processors known as the ‘Black Edition’ very little price differences between both versions, Intel only has its pricey Extreme editions. Is this a sign of better things to come from the chip giant?

Read on to find out more.

Any hardware enthusiast would be fully aware of AMD’s moves to play nice with the community by releasing most of their processors with an extra ‘Black Edition’, where the multiplier is conveniently unlocked to allow for much easier overlocking.

In contrast, while Intel processors are favoured by some for their superior computational power, few, if any, of Intel’s mainstream processors have an unlocked edition (the only known unlocked non-Extreme processor to date is the Pentium Dual Core E6500K, which is sold only in China), leaving enthusiasts with only the more pricey Extreme editions.

However, it seems as though things are about change, as Gigabyte had listed a new i7-875K processor on the compatiblity last for one of their motherboards, as shown in the screenshot below:

According to techPowerUp, the quad-core i7-875K is based on the Lynnfield core, and is clocked at approximately 3 Ghz (Gigabyte claims that a speed of 2.93GHz) and features the usual suspects: HyperThreading, 256 KB of L2 cache per core with 8 MB shared L3 cache, on-die dual-channel DDR3 memory controller and PCI-Express 2.0 root complex, along with the unlocked multiplier and has a TDP of 95w.

Unfortunately, there’s still no hard facts on when the unlocked i7 will be available for sale, and for which markets it is destined for: techPowerUp claims that Intel is planning to unveil the processor around the time of Computex 2010, but makes no mention of worldwide availability, if at all. Leaving us with little choice but to adopt the ‘wait-and-see’ approach as to whether the unlocked processors will ever find their way to our shores.